Panic Beats

Paul's (Jacinto Molina/Paul Naschy) wife is undergoing life-threatening health problems when their doctor recommends that Paul takes her away from the city for the sake of her physical wellbeing.  Luckily Paul has retained an isolated rustic family property that is expected to serve just the trick, hence they promptly head out there for a few weeks or months, however long Geneviève needs to recuperate (although the doctor doesn't sound overly optimistic).  It's not exactly a good idea from the get-go.  The minute they're out in the country Paul has to head off for petrol, leaving his already nervous-wreck of a wife waiting in the car.  In true Spanish Horror fashion, there are bandits roaming the woods, and they quickly attempt to thieve what they can from the petrified Geneviève.  In true Paul Naschy movie fashion, he quickly reappears to save the day via beating two types of manure out of the bandits.  The flustered couple arrive at the old property later on in the midst of a thunderstorm, where the housekeeper and her recently appointed assistant are preparing vegetables, as one would.  It's not long before the ancient legend of Paul's ancestor, Alaric De Marnac, is proving to be problematic - he was reputed to have butchered his lover for loving someone else many centuries prior, and is now materialising every century or so to butcher another lover in the family line - that's Geneviève.  Several ghostly and bloody goings-on ensue, with poor Geneviève finding herself in a significantly more stressed and near-death state than she was back in the city!

A damned fun movie from Naschy's mid-eighties output, there are a whole bunch of great characters in here to take pleasure in watching suffer, make sweet lovin', etc.  Naschy does his old double role thing, playing both good guy and bad guy as well as bedding the best looking women in the movie.  In this case the bad guy - Alaric - has made an appearance before Panic Beats (AKA Latidos de Pánico), back in the early seventies classic Horror Rises from the Tomb.  Of course we all know Naschy liked to regurgitate ideas and that's all part of the artistic charm.  One of the things I love about this movie, aside from its melding of Gothic and Gore, is the fact that everybody seems to be double-crossing one another.  Alaric himself doesn't seem to so bad standing next to many of these characters - at least he was honest!  A nice score against the atmospheric backdrop rounds out one of Naschy's best horror excursions.

The only release I've ever seen of this is Mondo Macabro's classic DVD, which came out in 2005.  I bought it back then and have watched it quite a few times since, as the film is always a bit of a blast.  Very good for its time (twofold because, as always, they exhumed a nearly lost gem) the picture looks quite soft by today's standards, although it's nicely framed at 1.66:1.  I should imagine this 35mm 1983 production could look splendid on HD these days.  The audio on the disc was delivered in its original Spanish language track with optional English subtitles to help.  Extras consisted of a 20 minute Spanish Horror documentary (Caroline Munro: 'The first thing you notice over there is that they don't speak English...'), a half hour documentary on the director/lead man, plus a few other titbits.  Long out of print, as I say this was a legendary release by one of the great boutique labels.